


Punk as hell (I'm going to need to sit down now)

by SweetPollyOliver



Category: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Power Rangers
Genre: Blood, Don't Try This At Home, Ear Piercings, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pre-Slash, Safety Pin Ear Piercing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-11 11:28:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11147490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetPollyOliver/pseuds/SweetPollyOliver
Summary: Skull gets Bulk to stick a safety pin through his ear for friendship.





	Punk as hell (I'm going to need to sit down now)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellipsesificate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellipsesificate/gifts).



> This fic is not intended to serve as instructions on how to do DIY piercing. It really, really is not that.

It was one of those things that had seemed like no big deal right up until the moment when he had to actually do it and then it was suddenly an enormous deal. 

"Just… like a band-aid," Skull said. "One, two, three: go!"

"I don't want to hurt you," Bulk replied. 

He was poised with the tip of a safety pin against his friend's earlobe and cork ready on the other side to stop him from piercing his own finger along with Skull's ear. 

"You won't if you do it quick enough," Skull said. "Just don't think about it and do it."

"Okay." Bulk closed his eyes and prepared himself before-

"Wait!" Skull half-shouted suddenly. 

He almost dropped the safety pin.

"What?" Bulk replied. "I hadn't even started to push it in, what's the problem?"

"Which ear is that?" Skull asked.

"What do you mean which ear is it?" Bulk answered his question with a question. "It's your ear don't you know what ear it is?"

"Left and right…" Skull gestured both ways with his hands vaguely and shrugged. "Never been good at telling them apart."

"Does it matter?" Bulk replied. 

"I… not… really," Skull looked downwards. "Actually I… do you know which one is the gay ear?"

"The what?" Bulk replied. He stood upright again, because continuing to have a conversation while he was hunched over holding his pal's ear was beginning to lose its charm.

"You know," Skull said. "One ear is supposed to be the one you pierce if you're gay. But I can't remember if it's the right or the left. I think it's the right?"

"Like my right or your right?" Bulk asked. 

"My right," Skull said confidently. "I… think. Yeah, my right." 

"Well you're good to go then," Bulk said. "Don't interrupt me again or I will have a heart attack and you'll have to take me to the hospital with a safety pin hanging out of your ear."

He leaned back down and, after wiping Skull's ear with some rubbing alcohol again for good measure, re-positioned the cork and put the tip of the pin just above the place he'd marked on the skin with a marker. 

"One, two, three," he muttered under his breath. 

On three, he pushed forward with a quick, smooth movement which… got the pin halfway through. Skull's eyes began to water and he whined under his breath.

"H- hold still," Bulk said. "I think it was too blunt. I'm gonna have to just… force it through."

"'kay," Skull said and closed his eyes tight. 

Blood was starting to pump out of the half made hole. It was bright, bright red except where it was starting to clot dark around the shaft of the pin. Bulk felt woozy. 

He gripped the safety pin harder and pushed as hard as he could. The feeling of the tip of the safety pin hitting the cork was at once exhilarating and sickening.

"Fuck!" Skull said and drummed his feet against the floor. 

"I am never doing that again," Bulk said.

He dropped his hands limply, before lifting them up to look at them more closely.

There was blood everywhere. It was in his fingerprints, under his nails. One long streak had dried halfway down his hand on its way to dripping down to his wrist.

"You don't have to," Skull said. "I just wanted this one." 

He reached up and started to jiggle the pin around, making fresh blood start to flow from his ear.

"What are you doing?" Bulk asked, reaching out to grab Skull's wrist. 

"I have to make the hole bigger for the earring," Skull said, as calmly as a person who didn't have a slasher movie franchise worth of gore dripping into his collar. 

"Oh right," Bulk replied and let Skull's wrist go. "Okay."

"I'm gonna take it out now—you should put the earring in."

He was already taking the safety pin out before Bulk could mentally prepare himself to get back up close and personal with the war zone that was Skull's earlobe. 

Bulk looked around for the square of kitchen roll they'd left the starter earring to dry on after disinfecting it earlier. He didn't want to look at Skull pulling the safety pin out of his ear, but he could kind of _hear_ the wet squelch of it, which was almost worse. 

"Don't forget to clean my ear first," Skull said. 

The safety pin was tossed onto the kitchen roll with the earring. There were big lumps of dried blood on it covered by a _lot_ of wet blood. 

Bulk's hands shook a little when he wiped Skull's ear clean. Clean _er_ that was, because every time he'd pass the tissue over it it would only stay clean for a microsecond before it'd start to bleed again. He managed to get the earring in without dropping it, but not without aiming wrong and not making it out clear to the other side on his first attempt. The hole was a little crooked and came out at the back higher up than the opening on the other side, so he had to put the earring in at an angle. But it was done now. 

Skull snatched up the hand mirror he'd appropriated from his mother shortly after he hit puberty, and never given back, to look at himself. 

"Nice!" he said, looking at his bloodstained and swollen earlobe. "So this is the right one?"

"Yeah. I mean, no. Left," Bulk said. "You said you didn't want the gay ear."

"Oh…" Skull said. He looked down again. "Yeah. Thanks." 

He looked disappointed briefly. He'd probably fucking forgotten and the left one actually was the gay ear.

If he was, he could take it out and either have _no_ ear pierced or get someone else to do it next time, because Bulk was _not_ going again with the other ear.

"Don't mention it," Bulk replied. "You can pay me back by writing the cheque when I have to see a psychiatrist about my friend making me maim him." 

"Baby," Skull said with a wide grin and shoved his shoulder companionably.

Skull turned away from him to get up and for a second he could only see the unblemished right half of his face in profile. Bulk still felt a little punch drunk. 

He kept the safety pin.

**Author's Note:**

> Skull has a pierced left ear in canon, which is sadly not the gay ear, but I feel this is wholly explicable by him not really being A+ on his left from right and/or being fuzzy on remembering which one the gay ear is anyway and/or a miscommunication causing the person piercing him to think he wanted to *avoid* having the gay ear pierced rather than this being his plan all along. Also he would definitely get Bulk to stick a safety pin through his ear rather than shell out the ten bucks to have it done in a tattoo parlour.


End file.
